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It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave.

Annie Dillard

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Annie Dillard
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: April 30
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
Annie Dillard Doak
Difficult
Undo
Recall
Recalls
Damage
Presence
Asked
Leave

More quotes by Annie Dillard

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On plenty of days the writer can write three or four pages, and on plenty of other days he concludes he must throw them away.
Annie Dillard
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Admire the world for never ending on you -- as you would an opponent, without taking your eyes away from him, or walking away.
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A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order - willed, faked, and so brought into being.
Annie Dillard
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You can't test courage cautiously.
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For all the insularity of the old guard, Pittsburgh was always an open and democratic town.
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One of the few things I know about writing is this: Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book, give it, give it all, give it now.
Annie Dillard
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Landscape consists in the multiple, overlapping intricacies and forms that exist in a given space at a moment in time.
Annie Dillard
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It should surprise no one that the life of the writer - such as it is - is colorless to the point of sensory deprivation. Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world.
Annie Dillard
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You can't test courage cautiously, so I ran hard and waved my arms hard, happy.
Annie Dillard
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Experiencing the present purely is being empty and hollow you catch grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall.
Annie Dillard
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Divinity is not playful. The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensibl e earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet. There is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it, or see.
Annie Dillard
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Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you.
Annie Dillard
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I couldn't unpeach the peaches.
Annie Dillard
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We wake, if ever at all, to mystery.
Annie Dillard
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There is no such thing as an artist: there is only the world lit or unlit as the light allows. When the candle is burning, who looks at the wick? When the candle is out, who needs it?
Annie Dillard
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When you write, you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner's pick, a wood carver's gouge, a surgeon's probe. You wield it, and it digs a path you follow. Soon you find yourself deep in new territory. Is it a dead end, or have you located the real subject? You will know tomorrow, or this time next year.
Annie Dillard
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By dipping us children in the Bible so often, they hoped, I think, to give our lives a serious tint, and to provide us with quaintly magnificent snatches of prayer to produce as charms while, say, being mugged for our cash or jewels.
Annie Dillard
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I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.
Annie Dillard
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The way to learn about a writer is to read the text. Or texts.
Annie Dillard
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Nothing moves a woman so deeply as the boyhood of the man she loves.
Annie Dillard